Apple Patent Shows Squeezable iDevices and Vanishing Keyboards

 

We may soon see a day when your iPh whiz and iPad physic completelyy deform at your touch and your MacBook has a disappearing keyboard, jibe to a patent Apple has been granted.

U.S. patent no. 8390481, “ spotting capacitance changes of a housing of an electronic device,” describes how a exploiter’s touch could be measured in a pressure-sensitive way. This would mean, for example, that if you’re holding a capacitive-touch device and touching the screen, your iGadget would grade between the fingers gripping the device and the fingers doing the tapping and swiping.

The mobile device’s outer housing, not the display itself, could be made of plastic metal. Sensors, either embedded or located directly infra the surface, would detect your touch, and different touch patterns could be utilise to presage onscreen events. The device could even change shape when squeezed (a little punctuate relief, perhaps?).

This could be useful for, say, going into camera style from the lock screen. Rather than swiping to reach the camera, holding the device in landscape mode with the screen toward you and fingers around its perimeter would contribute the camera app. Simply gripping the device in one excrete and giving it a gentle squeeze could acquire it on or wake it from sleep mode, negating the use up to blab a button. Paired with Apple’s interest in biometric sensor technology, squeezable iOS device could also eliminate the need for entering a code on your lockscreen — it could recognize your unparalleled grip and fingerprints as soon as you pick it up.

With a wave of your hand, the keyboard could appear or disappear.

But that’s not all this patent details. It also goes on to show how gestures could be used to make your MacBook’s keyboard appear or disappear. When they keyboard is not displayed, a “metallic solid continuous surface” would be apparent instead. Micro-perforations could be used to signify the edges and lettering of the keys. Waving your hand over this surface would make the previously hidden keys appear.

The ideas envisage up in Apple’s patents may or may not ever come to fruition, but they do give us a peek at the ideas the Cupertino caller-up noodles with.

Materials taken from WIRED